The Impaler

by Gregory Funaro

  “I’m not asking about his work, Lois. I’m just asking if this Vlad boy is his boy.”

  Lois Markham rolled her eyes and slipped two eggs onto her son’s plate.

  “It’s all right,” Markham said. “I’ve no problem telling you I’m working on this case, Dad. But pretty much all we know is what you guys have read in the paper there.” This was a lie, but he didn’t care; knew this was the best way to get his father off the subject, and added, “But you have to keep all this between us. Don’t go mentioning anything about me to the boys at the gun club. Okay?”

  “What the hell do I look like?” said Peter Markham, cutting his steak. “I know better than to shoot my mouth off. You see, Lois? That’s all I wanted to know.”

  Lois sighed and sat down at the table with a look of knowing resignation that her son had seen many times over the years. As close as he had been with his father growing up, Markham knew deep down that he was more like his mother—more reserved, more intellectual, and (oh God, don’t fucking say it!) more sensitive.

  Lois Markham had worked for a time in real estate with her husband, but for most of her adult life she’d been a stay-at-home mom. She dabbled in painting and poetry before her son was born, and used to take little Sammy with her to the theater and to classical music concerts. Peter Markham would never have been caught dead at the theater—used to say that all that artsy-fartsy stuff was gonna turn his boy into a sissy—but somehow Peter and Lois Markham made it work for over forty years.

  “I’ll tell you this, however,” said Peter Markham with a mouthful of food. “The only way you guys’ll catch this nut-bag is if he screws up. I’m not knocking what you do, Sammy, don’t get me wrong. But all them serial killers that I’ve read about, they screw up eventually, am I right?”

  “Not all of them,” said Markham. “Some have never been caught—”

  “I know, I know,” his father said, waving his fork. “Jack the Ripper was one, sure. But nowadays it’s just a matter of time. I guess you could say that they screw up all along, but it takes a smart guy like you to see the screw-ups that nobody else sees. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “All right, Peter,” said his wife. “Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”

  “What? I’m just telling my son I’m proud of him. I am proud of you, Sammy. You know that, don’t you?”

  Markham nodded but said nothing. He chewed his food slowly as his mind drifted to the Impaler. What the hell was he doing in Connecticut having dinner with his parents when he should be back in Raleigh? He was due to fly out tomorrow afternoon around two o’clock, but the idea of spending another night here, the idea of waiting well into the day tomorrow, suddenly seemed unbearable to him.

  The family ate the rest of their meal peppered with small talk—politics, the Yankees, a woman Lois knew who left her husband for a younger man—but Markham’s mind soon turned to Andy Schaap.

  Still working on his lists, he thought. Christ, I ’d give anything to trade places with him right now.

  After his parents retired to the den to watch a movie on HBO, Markham excused himself and stepped out onto the back porch. He dialed Schaap’s number on his BlackBerry—tried him first at the Resident Agency, then left a voice mail on his cell asking how things were going and to call him back ASAP with an update.

  Then he sat for a long time just staring out the screened porch windows to the jagged silhouette of woods behind his house. It was chilly, and he could not see the stars, but he had no urge to go outside to look at them. Instead he closed his eyes and imagined what the sky would look like had he been camping out in the backyard with his father as they so often did when he was a child. Back then, little Sammy Markham didn’t know where to look for Leo, but tonight he saw the lion through the eyes of a little boy—bright and shining above all the other constellations—and began to wonder if the Impaler ever camped out in the backyard with his father, too.

  Chapter 64

  The General almost fell off his ladder when the FBI agent’s BlackBerry went off. He was working in the attic with his grandfather’s old circular saw, and had he not paused to wipe the sweat from his brow, he most certainly wouldn’t have heard KISS’s “Detroit Rock City” blaring up at him from the attic floor. The General would never have pegged Andrew J. Schaap as a KISS fan, but then again, a lot of things had taken him by surprise today.

  “I feel uptight on Saturday night,” Paul Stanley wailed, and the General nodded absently. He was uptight, too. Things were taking longer than expected, and even after all these years, he was still afraid to be in the attic alone. But the work up there had to be done. And soon.

  True, judging from Andrew J. Schaap’s lists and the files on his computer, he and the Prince still had time to get things done before the rest of the FBI arrived. But what to do next and where to go once the work in the house was complete—well, that remained to be seen in the Prince’s visions.

  The FBI agent was working alone. There was no doubt about that, and no doubt that he had only recently put two and two together and was working systematically down a list of names. The General had not been able to sign into the Sentinel case management system (something he shouldn’t do anyway, IP addresses and all that), but still, from what files he could access, the General was nothing short of blown away.

  The FBI knew almost everything—his relationship with the Prince, the stars, the ancient texts, the mark of the lion, Nergal, and the connection to Iraq. But what really stunned the General was the account of how the ancient Babylonian seal was found in Italy—the same seal that Edmund Lambert had offered up to the lion on the eve of his anointing!

  Incredibly, the ancient artifact had been found. How? The General couldn’t even begin to imagine. Maybe the lion dropped it, or maybe the seal had been discovered in the lion’s stomach by someone who had killed it for meat. Maybe it was found in the lion’s shit—

  Or maybe, said a voice in his head, just maybe the lion never took the seal at all. Maybe you imagined the whole thing and dropped the seal in the alleyway. Maybe one of your comrades found it and sold it in Qatar himself—

  But the General only laughed at this idea. The lion in Tal Afar had been real—there could be no doubt about that. The seal, that very instrument that the ancient Babylonians had used to seal their secret messages, was a secret message in and of itself. And that Edmund Lambert, the man who would become the General, should have selected it from all the other stolen artifacts proved that he was not only worthy but also the only mortal capable of understanding the Prince’s messages.

  Furthermore, the fact that Andrew J. Schaap and almost the entirety of the FBI’s investigation had been literally dumped on his doorstep proved to the General two things: one, that the Prince’s return was indeed inevitable; and two, that it was up to the General to put all the information he had been given to good use.

  “But who is this Sam Markham?” he’d wondered when he first searched the FBI agent’s laptop. “Who is this man who seems to know the Prince better than anyone?”

  Oh yes, the General had thought, this Sam Markham was a very smart man; for the files on the computer made it abundantly clear that it was he who had singlehandedly put everything together.

  But the General did not have the time to ponder this. More important matters required his immediate attention. And now, hours later, the BlackBerry was ringing on the attic floor; now, perhaps, Andrew J. Schaap’s friends had begun looking for him. The General didn’t know if they would activate the vehicle-tracking device that he figured was hidden inside the TrailBlazer. And would they be able to get a bead on their man’s cell signal? He would have to dispose of the TrailBlazer and the BlackBerry soon. The General had his own cell phone, which he hardly ever used; only kept it with him when he was at Harriot in case the alarm went off and the security company had to call him.

  However, the fact that the BlackBerry had not rung until now told the General that the FBI was not looking for their agent just
yet. He had time, he still had time—

  But was Agent Schaap supposed to have been at another meeting tonight? Did this Sam Markham find out anything more about the Impaler?

  The General hopped off the ladder and removed the pistol he’d tucked into the back of his jeans. He set it on the floor and sat down next to the cell phone. The message dinged into voice mail, and he stared at the word BlackBerry for a long time, wondering if there was a message in it.

  No matter, he thought. The new doorway was already being prepared in the cellar. It was only a matter of time before it would be ready to be placed on the throne, and then the General would be able to communicate with the Prince again directly.

  “Communicate,” the General said absently, and pressed the menu button on the BlackBerry. He didn’t bother trying to get into the FBI agent’s voice mail, and instead scrolled down the to the missed calls list.

  “Sam Markham,” he read. “The smart little friend from the Federal Bureau of c’est mieux d’oublier.”

  The General sprang to his feet, flew down the two flights of stairs, and ended up in the workroom. He sat down at his computer and googled “Sam Markham” and “FBI.”

  Bingo, first hit, an article from a Tampa newspaper about a serial killer named Jackson Briggs—the Sarasota Stran-gler, they called him. Some petty, self-involved moron who brutalized little old ladies, then strangled them, all while dressed up as a ninja. Sam Markham had been the one to take him down.

  “Looks like they brought out the big guns for us,” the General said, hitting the print button. “Only a matter of time before he figures out what his friend was up to.”

  He clicked a few more links, and found a photograph of Markham standing with a group of FBI agents. He was an attractive male, the General thought. Chiseled features, penetrating eyes, a strong jaw—someone with whom the young man named Edmund Lambert might have liked to copulate back in those days when he searched for meaning in such things.

  The General hit the print button again. The newspaper article and the photograph of Sam Markham most certainly would have to go on the reeducation chamber wall. After all, Sam Markham was part of the equation now, too. How? He wasn’t exactly sure.

  But the General had an idea.

  Chapter 65

  George Kiernan didn’t come backstage to give the cast their notes after the show on Saturday night; only sent a message via the stage manager that he’d meet with them in the house an hour before the matinee on Sunday. That wasn’t good, Cindy thought. That meant he was really pissed off. And as she left the theater, Cindy was afraid she might run into him in the parking lot.

  Later, as she was driving home, she started to feel kind of bad for him. She knew his elderly mother came to the shows on Saturday nights. Cindy always thought this was just the sweetest thing, and oftentimes imagined herself on Broadway many years from now with her own elderly mother sitting in the front row, smiling up at her. Besides, Kiernan had warned everyone on Friday to take it easy at the cast party and have their shit together the following night. They had really let him down, and Cindy didn’t like to let people down.

  She couldn’t deny that she was just as much to blame as everyone else. She was tired and felt off during her performance. She had e-mailed Edmund twice that day—before and after her shift at Chili’s—and was at first disappointed, then angry, then finally worried when he didn’t reply. She couldn’t find his number in the campus directory and had no idea how to get in touch with him other than the Internet. She knew where he lived, of course, but his house was out in the sticks—too far to visit and be back in time for the show. Oh yeah, there was no denying it: her bizarre-o date with Edmund Lambert had really fucked with her head, not to mention all the gossip going around the department about the fight at the cast party.

  It was all good for Cindy, though, who was looked upon as a goddess by her female cast mates—even Amy Pratt, who asked her point-blank if she and Edmund had sex. Cindy told her they hadn’t, and Amy seemed genuinely relieved. Go figure. Rumors were flying, however, but Amy assured her that she would set the record straight. Besides, she said, the majority of the gossip was about Bradley Cox and his crew getting their asses whipped. And Cindy didn’t need Amy Pratt to tell her that said gossip was really fucking with Mr. Macbeth’s head.

  On top of it all, Cindy thought, Bradley-boy was going to get it bad from George Kiernan. Never mind that he was obviously hungover; never mind the noticeable swelling at the bridge of his nose and the way it affected his speech during his performance. Bradley Cox had actually missed an entrance on Saturday night.

  Cindy was the one waiting for him onstage when it hap-pened—early on in the first act, when Macbeth returns home after his first confrontation with the Witches. Cox had been getting into it with one of the cast members, Amy told Cindy during intermission—something about Lambert being lucky Cox had been drinking so much, otherwise he would’ve kicked soldier boy’s ass. But when he finally realized he was supposed to be onstage, he tripped and stumbled on his entrance. That’s when the audience laughed at him.

  Cindy remembered that part clearly. The rest was kind of a blur.

  “Thy letters have transported me beyond this ignorant present,” she said, helping him recover his footing, “and I feel now the future in the instant.”

  Cox stared back at her dopily—his lips frozen in an O, his tongue groping for his line as the audience whispered and tittered in the long pause that followed.

  “Thou look’st strange, my dearest love,” Cindy said, improvising, hoping he’d pick up on her clue. Nothing. Cindy panicked and said, “Thou meanst to tell me the king is coming?”

  “My dearest love!” Cox blurted. “Duncan comes here tonight!”

  More laughter, but they ended up getting through the scene all right. The rest of the show, however, suffered. The rhythm was off, a couple of flubbed lines here and there—nothing major, really, but to George Kiernan the show would have seemed unworthy of a dress rehearsal.

  As for herself, Cindy hoped her quick thinking would buy her some mercy from Kiernan during his note session tomorrow. But at the same time she knew how bad her “Out, out damned spot!” speech had gone—and even she couldn’t blame Bradley Cox for that. No, Cindy thought. It was her own fault for staying out so late—and for letting Edmund Lambert mess with her head.

  True, Edmund didn’t seem like the kind of guy who liked to play games. But as Cindy turned onto her street, she was finally ready to admit to herself how hurt she’d been when he didn’t stop by after the show. He let her down—didn’t make good on what he said in his bizarre-o note—and Cindy had to fight the urge to turn around and head straight for Wilson and ask him why. If she didn’t have the matinee tomorrow, she thought, she probably would have.

  No, you wouldn’t, taunted a voice in her head. You’re too much of a wuss to do something like that.

  Fuck you.

  Will you relax and try playing it cool for once? Christ, the guy said on opening night he’d be there for photo call tomorrow. Remember?

  Cindy didn’t respond.

  Give him a break, will you? Maybe something came up. Why don’t you wait until you talk to him before you start flipping out?

  Cindy sighed and pulled into her driveway.

  Chronic fucking OCD, I swear.

  “All right,” she said, turning off the ignition. “If soldier boy doesn’t show up for photo call tomorrow, we’ll see whether or not I don’t take a drive out to Wilson.”

  Chapter 66

  In his bedroom, Markham had just finished downloading a song onto his laptop. An agent from the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime had entered it into Sentinel as being on the CD Jose Rodriguez used for his Leona Bonita act. “Dark in the Day,” a remake of a popular tune from the eighties. Markham remembered the song from high school, but couldn’t place the name of the band.

  “How could you think I ’d let you get away?

  When I came out of the d
arkness and told you who you are?”

  Markham looped the song on his computer’s media player and listened to it over and over again. The lyrics. He couldn’t shake the connection, couldn’t help but see the totality of the message through the Impaler’s eyes, and felt a chill run up his spine when he imagined himself sitting in the audience, watching Rodriguez prowl about the stage in his lion drag.

  “I thought I heard you calling. You thought you heardme speak.

  Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”

  Markham let the song cycle through one more time, then rolled over and saw his BlackBerry blinking on the night-stand. He checked it—a couple of e-mails and a text message from Andy Schaap. Finally.

  Your voice mail was cracking up, the message read. Didn’t get all of it. What’s up?

  Markham texted back: Any progress?

  A moment later: Where r u?

  Still in ct.

  Ct?

  Odd, Markham thought, and typed: ct = Connecticut.

  Then an entire two minutes went by before Schaap replied: Duh sorry. Tired. Nothing new. Still getting names. What’s your eta?

  Tomorrow @ 4pm.

  Another long pause before Schaap texted back: Need ride?

  No. Car @ airport.

  K. Have a safe trip. C u @ RA when u get back.

  Markham stared at his BlackBerry for a long time. The texting with Schaap bothered him for some reason. He couldn’t place it. No, he’d never communicated with him this way before—Schaap always called him—but the questions, the lingo—

  “Christ,” Markham said. Now he was overanalyzing things—looking for something to worry about in this limbo of waiting to get back to Raleigh.

  Schaap was tired, too, that’s all. But maybe that’s what worried him. Could he depend on Schaap not to miss anything?