7 Sykos

by Marsheila Rockwell

“What others?”

  “You’ll see, Gino. Just be patient.”

  “Doc, I been in prison for more than a decade. Maximum security. Sometimes in solitary. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s patience.”

  Lily June Ogden and Caspar Willetts Pybus arrived on the same chopper, less than an hour after Antonetti. They’d both been incarcerated in Kansas.

  Pybus had been held at the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth. He’d been sentenced there when it was still a maximum-­security federal prison. By the time it was downgraded to medium security, he was pushing fifty, and during his eight years there, he’d never been a disciplinary problem, so he was allowed to stay. He’d been older going in than a lot of inmates were coming out, if they got out at all.

  Lily was serving her sentence at the Topeka Correctional Facility, the state’s only women’s prison. She was twenty and looked younger, but there had never been any question about trying her as an adult.

  This time, Ramirez accompanied Fallon to the helipad, with Davidson following right behind. And this time, she knew not to stand so close.

  “He’s a psychopath?” Ramirez asked, as Pybus stepped down from the helicopter’s belly. “Doesn’t look like much.”

  Fallon understood her question. Caspar Pybus came across as mild-­mannered. He might have been an accountant, or maybe a classics professor at some private university. Wire-­rimmed glasses perched on his nose, constantly in danger of falling off. With his neatly trimmed hair turning grey at the temples and a mustache always trimmed precisely at the corners of his mouth, he even looked prim in prison orange.

  “Neither did John Wayne Gacy,” Fallon said. “Looks have nothing to do with psychopathy. Caspar killed four women. He’d meet them at gigs—­he played guitar and sang with a cover band at country-­western bars—­invite them to his home, and then imprison them for a few weeks in a basement room. After he killed the first one, he cut her up and cooked as much as he could, and later made a point of serving pieces of his most recent victim to each new one. Again, after locking them up for a ­couple of weeks. They never did find out if he raped them or what because it’s hard to run a rape kit on a pot roast.”

  Ramirez shuddered.

  “I know,” Fallon said. “So, yeah, psychopath of the highest order. You should see his limbic system.”

  “That’s okay, thanks. Aren’t African-­American serial killers relatively rare?”

  ­“People think that because in movies and TV shows, they usually see white ones,” Fallon replied. She was surprised Ramirez didn’t know, but the fact was that most FBI agents didn’t spend a lot of time chasing serial killers. “Actually, the ratio of minorities to whites among serial killers is basically proportionate to their representation in the overall population. It’s an equal-­opportunity aberration.”

  Lily came off next. Pybus had been allowed to disembark by himself, but Lily had a soldier holding each arm. She was short, curvy without being heavy, and looked surprisingly fresh-­faced. Fallon had seen pictures of her during trial and knew she could come across as the girl next door. But she’d also seen photos of Lily from before her arrest, when she did the full-­on Goth thing; hair like spilled ink, enough eyeliner to drive up Max Factor’s stock prices—­or Hot Topic’s, more likely. On the top of her left breast—­kept discreetly concealed in the courtroom—­she had a tattoo that said “Born Dead” in Gothic lettering.

  “You’re not thinking of sending her into the zone?” Ramirez asked. “What’d Lily do, skip school?”

  “She’ll only answer to Lilith, since that’s what she was called in the press after her arrest,” Fallon said. “She persuaded five different men to kill for her. That’s what she was convicted of, anyway. She claims there were seventeen victims, but the prosecution couldn’t get enough evidence to make a case for the other twelve. She also claims she did some of the killing herself—­including that of the aunt and uncle who raised her, and, she says, took turns molesting her and farming her out to their friends. But she didn’t tell anybody that until after she’d been convicted of conspiring to kill, and she never made a formal confession. She told me when I scanned her, but I wasn’t an agent of the court. I told her warden, but it was hearsay and not admissible in court.”

  “So nobody really knows if she’s killed or not.”

  “Not for sure, no. Didn’t stop Charles Manson from spending the rest of his life in prison. He encouraged murder, conspired to murder, but there’s no evidence that he did any of the killing himself.”

  “Sounds like you really establish a rapport with some of these crazies.”

  “I’m not there to judge them, and they know it. They also trust that what they tell me won’t get back to the prison population.”

  “What about Lily’s—­Lilith’s—­non-­confession confession?”

  “In that case, I guess if the warden was careless or corrupt, it might have come back around to bite both of us on the ass. But if there were innocent men doing time for murders she blamed on them, I wanted someone to know it.”

  “Makes sense.”

  The helicopter blades had stopped spinning, and the dust was settling, so Fallon and SAC Ramirez stepped forward to greet the prisoners. Pybus gave a courtly bow, and Lilith flipped Fallon the bird. “You tried to fuck me over,” she said.

  “Corrupt, or careless?” Ramirez whispered.

  “Dr. O’Meara?” Pybus scoffed. “Impossible. Her ethics are beyond reproach.”

  “She reproached me right up the ass with a two-­by-­four,” Lily—­no, Lilith; if that’s what the girl answered to, Fallon wanted to think of her that way—­said to him, but her next words, full of a little too much hurt, were directed at Fallon. “I trusted you.”

  “Look, Lilith, you’re right. You trusted me, and I threw you under the bus. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone wasting away in prison because you fingered him for a killing you did. I’m sorry.”

  Lilith barked a loud “Hah!” Her breath smelled like stale tobacco smoke, and maybe pot. “Don’t sweat it,” she added. “Got me some new respect on the block, and they ain’t gonna try me again, so whatever the fuck, right?”

  “Sure,” Fallon replied. “Whatever. Anyway, we’re going to make you comfortable—­within reason, anyway—­for a while. We’re waiting for one more to arrive.”

  “One more what?” Pybus asked. His voice was deep and pleasant. She had never heard him sing, but had no doubt that it would sound wonderful.

  “One more psychopath, Caspar,” Fallon said.

  Lilith laughed again. “Had to be either that or human sacrifice, right?”

  “Or both,” Pybus added.

  You don’t know how right you are, Fallon thought. Instead of saying it out loud, she directed the guards toward the Prison Block, where those reasonably comfortable accommodations awaited.

  “One more,” Ramirez said after they were out of hearing. Her tone was unsettled.

  Fallon knew what she was getting at. They’d been over the plan a dozen times, at least, and that was always a sticking point. They both thought an odd number of psychopaths was a better idea than an even number—­there might be times, inside the quarantine zone, when they’d have to vote on a course of action, and they’d need a tiebreaker. Fallon had identified seven likely subjects, but it turned out that one was in the hospital after having been shanked by a cellmate, and his chances of pulling through weren’t looking good. So her final list consisted of six. They could send five in, but it was going to be dangerous in there, and five hardly seemed like enough even if they were all seasoned killers.

  Before Fallon could answer, the sound of another helicopter cut through the desert night. In another minute, its lights came into view as it dropped toward the PIR. “Joe Sansome,” Fallon said.

  “He’s the one who decapitated all those women?”

  Fall
on nodded. “Seven of them. Each one a green-­eyed blonde with an overbite. They reminded him of the girl who broke his heart in high school.”

  “Some guys just can’t handle rejection, I guess.”

  “Apparently not. The weird thing is, he completely lost track of her after high school. Her name was Becky something. Anyway, one day he’s standing in a supermarket checkout line in west Texas, buying some soft drinks and candy. He looks up and sees her.”

  “Becky?”

  “Becky. She’s just coming in the store. She doesn’t see him, but he can tell it’s her a mile away. He goes out and sits in his stolen car. The candy bars melt. Finally, she comes out. He follows her home, stalks her for a week. To work, to the gym, shopping, back home again. Trying to work up the nerve to cut off the one head he’d been after, metaphorically, all along. Instead, he realizes he can’t do it, so he calls the police, and says, ‘I think you’re looking for me. I cut off some girls’ heads.’ ”

  While they talked, the helicopter lowered to the earth. Prop wash smacked the ground and threw up a cloud. By the time it subsided, Sansome had been walked off the chopper. He was enormous: a walking, talking, semiliterate refrigerator crate with a wide, flat face—­a physical trait often linked to aggressive behavior in men. Fallon had always thought there was a strange, simple sweetness to him . . . if someone whose hobby was cutting off heads could be sweet.

  She was tired of talking to psychos, and he not only had chains around his wrists connected to more around his belly and his ankles, but he was gagged with what looked like a bondage getup. She waved his escorts toward the Prison Block, and a soldier stepped up to show them the way.

  “No conversation?” Ramirez asked.

  “Sansome’s not much for talking.”

  “One more question? I know it’s late.”

  “Sure.”

  “What’d he do with the heads?”

  Fallon managed a weary smile. “Bowling-­ball bags.”

  “Bowling balls?”

  “When he turned himself in, local law enforcement searched the stolen car. In the trunk they found eight bowling-­ball bags. One was empty.”

  Soledad chuckled, a dry laugh without much humor in it. “You’re tired,” she said. “Me, too. We should turn in. Tomorrow, we can bring your psychos up to speed. I still wish we had an odd number, but we’ll just make do.”

  “Yeah, Soledad? About that . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  Fallon’s mouth opened, but then she saw a jeep barreling toward them, Jerry at the wheel. Book sat next to him, Thurman and General Robbins in the back. “Here comes the brass.”

  Jerry pulled the jeep up beside them just as the helicopter’s propellers picked up speed. Everyone was quiet for a few moments until the bird had lifted off, and the racket had died down.

  “Looks like we missed the party,” Book said.

  “Everybody’s over at the Prison Block,” Fallon said. “I’m sure they’ll be rocking the night away.”

  Robbins laughed. “Prison Block? Good name for it. Better than ‘temporary confinement facility.’ ”

  “Head over, sir?” Jerry asked.

  “I’m in no hurry to see them,” Robbins replied.

  “If you have a minute?” Fallon said.

  “Sure, Dr. O’Meara. What’s on your mind?”

  “I was just about to tell Special Agent in Charge Ramirez, but as long as you’re here, it probably makes more sense to tell you all at once.”

  “Tell us what, Fallon?” Thurman asked.

  “You know we wanted to get seven . . . umm, volunteers here, right? In case there are disagreements between them during the mission.”

  “Six will do,” Ramirez said.

  “Better than none,” Book added. “At least there’s a chance to avoid the nukes.”

  Robbins scowled at the back of Book’s head. “Go on, Doctor.”

  “Well, there is one more person available to us with the correct brain structure. Someone who’s also immune to the virus.”

  “There is?” Thurman asked.

  “Who is it?” Robbins demanded.

  “No, Fallon,” Book said, looking alarmed. “Don’t do—­”

  Fallon swallowed hard, interrupted.

  “Me.”

  CHAPTER 18

  53 hours

  “What?” Ramirez and Thurman asked at the same time. Robbins frowned, and Book looked like he might be ill.

  “Me,” Fallon repeated, louder now and more confidently. Her secret—­well, one of them—­was out now, and there was no turning back, only forging ahead. Time to own it. “I’ve done the scans, multiple times. They were supposed to be part of the control group—­a normal baseline to compare abnormal brain structures against. Turns out my ‘normal’ . . . isn’t so much.”

  “But you haven’t killed anyone,” Thurman protested. “They ran a thorough background check on you and everyone else in your lab before funding your grant. Something like that would have popped, for sure.”

  “Having a brain structure common to psychopaths doesn’t automatically make you one. Just like having a genetic predisposition to a particular disease doesn’t mean you’re ever going to get it. Biology isn’t destiny. And psychopaths aren’t born; they’re made—­typically by genetics ­coupled with childhood trauma and abuse. But I didn’t grow up surrounded by or subjected to violence. I had a loving, two-­parent home where the worst thing that ever happened to me was not getting that Red Ryder BB gun I wanted for Christmas. In short, I have the nature but never had the nurture.”

  It was the textbook explanation for why some ­people with dysfunctional or damaged limbic systems became cold-­blooded serial killers, and others never did. It was also Fallon’s mantra when she was lying in bed at night, and sleep wouldn’t come.

  “Luckily,” she continued, “I don’t need to have had any of the awful experiences so common to psychopaths in order to be immune to the virus. I just needed to win the brain lottery.”

  “Not sure I’d call that winning,” Ramirez muttered.

  Fallon ignored the comment, pressing on with her hard sell. She didn’t want anyone dwelling on the negatives or giving Robbins a reason to nix the idea. Not only did putting her on Team Psycho solve the odd-­number problem, but it meant that she could get inside the containment zone, and after some late-­night soul-­searching, she’d decided that was something she really needed to do.

  The route she and Ramirez had worked out—­assuming there were no Infected-­inspired detours—­would take them right through downtown Phoenix, where Elliott had last been seen. If he was still there—­and if she could find him—­then maybe she could get the prototype back. She could build another easily enough, provided she could get more funding. That wasn’t the issue.

  Time was.

  She had been using it on herself for months. She had worried that Jason was slipping away from her—­or she from him—­and even more worried that she didn’t care all that much. So she decided to try tamping down her psychopathic nature with the MEIADD. The effects were only temporary, though the more she’d used it, the longer they lasted, and she suspected there might be a cumulative benefit if she kept it up. At any rate, she had become a better, more caring mother, and Jason had seemed to respond in kind. She wasn’t about to give that up now.

  And who knew what Elliott might do with the prototype? Sell it to the highest bidder? She had staked her career—­and now her personal life—­on developing the technology. It was all she had, outside of her family, and without it, she might lose both

  She had to get into the city, and this looked like her only path. Not just for her own benefit, though that was paramount, but for Phoenix’s, too. And maybe it was the so-­called “warrior gene” in her expressing itself, but if she had nothing left to lose—­if she couldn’t retrieve the MEIADD—�
�then going down swinging in defense of the human race definitely had some appeal.

  “It makes sense,” Fallon insisted, focusing her argument on Robbins since he was the one who would have the ultimate say-­so on whether she’d be able to join the others. “I’m the one who developed the plan with Ramirez, and I live here. I know the proposed route, and how to get around if the way is blocked. I know what to expect—­I’ve seen the videos. Aside from Light, I’m the only one who does, and you really don’t want him leading the team, do you?”

  “I don’t want any of them leading it. I don’t even want there to be a team that needs to be led,” the general replied.

  “But if there’s a chance—­” Ramirez began, and Robbins cut her short with a wave of his hand.

  “We’ve had the argument, Soledad; you and the good doctor already won. We’ll give the psychos some time to try to find this meteor of yours and bring it back. Despite what you may think, I’m not particularly eager to nuke one of the biggest cities in the country. But I’m not afraid to give the order if I have to.”

  “Let me go with them, and there will be less likelihood of that,” Fallon urged quietly.

  “She’s right,” Thurman said suddenly, surprising them all. “We can’t trust any of them to do what we’re asking once they’re not bound and gagged. Fallon knows them, she knows the area, she knows the job. If she’s really immune, there’s no better choice to lead them.”

  “I am,” Fallon replied. “I can show you the scans if you don’t believe me. Or you can just ask Book.”

  Everyone looked at the analyst, who reddened under their scrutiny.

  “It’s true,” he said grudgingly, his eyes never leaving Fallon’s. She could see how much it pained him to say it—­of all of them, he was the one who knew the most about her, since he’d had access to all her files, personal and otherwise. He knew what she was, and what she’d be leaving behind. “I’ve seen them. Her brain is just as messed up as theirs are, so if we’re right about psychopathic brain structure conferring immunity—­and I believe we are—­then she’s immune, too.”