The Impaler

by Gregory Funaro

  Markham shrugged, and a heavy silence fell over the office as he stared up at the board.

  “The superposition principle,” Gates said finally. “It’s eating away at you isn’t it? Still so many questions now that the Impaler’s dead. You never got entirely in his wake. Can’t see the messages, the equations from his point of view. Not all of them, anyway.”

  “No. Not all of them.”

  “But you saw enough to catch him, and that’s what matters.”

  “Is it?”

  “As far as we can tell, Edmund Lambert had been killing since late December, early January. Twelve victims in four months, including the two drifters we found buried behind the barn—the ones you said he used as his doorways. Andy Schaap, Cox, and the four he got with the car bomb were only icing on the cake for him.”

  Markham was silent.

  “I know how it looks,” Gates continued. “You flying in from Quantico and catching the Impaler in just over a week—”

  “I didn’t catch anybody,” Markham said, turning. “It was Schaap who found Lambert, and Lambert found me. I got lucky the Smith girl showed up when she did. I’ve been getting lucky a lot lately. Lambert, Briggs—most of all, I’m lucky people don’t start seeing me for the fraud I really am.”

  “Trust me,” Gates said, rising. “I understand how difficult it is to wrap your mind around the reasons why Schaap bit it and you didn’t. The same goes for the Cindy Smith factor. You saw what Lambert did to her. It was only a matter of time before he tore her to shreds. You saved that girl’s life, Sam, no matter how much you try to deny it because she saved yours.”

  Markham narrowed his eyes at him.

  “That’s right,” Gates said. “Schaap found Lambert and Lambert found you, but the fact that Schaap is dead doesn’t give you the right to feel sorry for yourself because you’re not. Nor does it make you any more of a fraud than it makes Schaap unlucky.”

  Markham studied him. His boss was staring up at the clock above the door.

  “You’re a good man, Sam,” Alan Gates said distantly. “You deserve to live. I suggest you remember that in the days ahead. To think otherwise will only drive you insane.”

  Later that evening, Markham placed the thank-you card from Marla Rodriguez on his bureau—“I jumped for joy!” it read; a smiling, cartooned frog leaping from a lily pad.

  He’d kept his promise—returned her computer to her family and bought the little girl her own laptop. He also showed her how to password-protect her startup so her brother Diego couldn’t use it. Marla had really appreciated that, and kissed him on the cheek and told him she loved him. Markham told her he loved her, too.

  He missed her terribly; had felt closer to her in that one moment than he had to anyone in the last ten years. And as he stared from the card to the plaque above his bedroom door, the FBI agent felt suddenly like he couldn’t breathe.

  Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

  A flash of Edmund Lambert’s tattoo—of his bloody chest and the temple doors at Kutha, the doorway to Hell.

  Markham reached up and pulled the plaque from the wall—tossed it into the closet, put on his Windbreaker, and dashed outside.

  The fresh air felt good, and he breathed it greedily as he walked down to the pond. He could hear the ducks rustling in the thickets and wondered if he was disturbing them. He didn’t care to look up at the stars just yet; preferred instead to gaze out over the water to the lights that dotted the opposite shore. Lights from town houses just like his own; lights from lives that couldn’t be more different.

  He thought of Andy Schaap and the life he left behind; he thought of his people at Quantico, of their lives and the distance from him that had already settled in their eyes. But he felt nothing for them. Like the lives across the water, like the stars above his head, they were all so far away from him.

  Markham saw a light go out in one of the windows and immediately thought of Edmund Lambert—of the look in his eyes when he spoke to the stars and breathed his final breath. To whom did the Impaler speak—His grandfather? Eugene Ralston? His mother? The god Nergal?—well, that was anybody’s guess now.

  Then again, Markham thought, what’s the use in guessing?

  He sighed and gave in—gazed up at the stars and began searching for the constellation Leo. Despite the crescent moon he could not find it—too much light, too close to civilization to see the stars clearly from out here—and suddenly Sam Markham felt painfully alone.

  He sat down in the grass by the thicket; could hear the ducks shifting and gurgling in the darkness and was thankful for their company. But it was not enough.

  He lay back on his elbows, closed his eyes, and tried to imagine the beach—tried to imagine the stars as they had looked on that night a thousand years ago when he and Michelle had made love for the first time. But in his mind he always ended up on the beach alone—no Michelle, no Cassiopeia—nothing but sand and waves and stars. And those stars looked different tonight, too. For tonight, and for many more nights to come, the sky that was his mind had room for only the nine and the three.

  “Come back,” he whispered.

  To whom Sam Markham spoke, well, that was anybody’s guess now, too.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank my editor, John Scognamiglio at Kensington Publishing Corp., and my agent, William Reiss at John Hawkins & Associates, for their assistance in developing The Impaler. Also, my sincerest thanks to all the great people at Kensington who try their hardest to make me look good (not an easy task), including Arthur Maisel, Lou Mal-cangi, my publicist Frank Anthony Polito, and Meryl Earl and Colleen Martin, both of whom have done a terrific job promoting my books abroad.

  For their advice and counsel, I am especially beholden to: Milo Dowling, retired FBI agent; Reid Parker, technical director here at ECU; Chris Christman, hunter extraordinaire; Yesenia Ayala, for her Spanish expertise; and Marylaura Pa-palas, for her lightning-fast French translations.

  To the members of my family who slugged through The Impaler in its various drafts, I owe you all much love and gratitude: my wife, Angela; my father, Anthony; my mother, Linda Ise; my brother, Michael; my uncle, Raymond Funaro; and my grandmother, Lois Ise. The same goes for my friends and colleagues: Robert Caprio, Jill Matarelli-Carlson, Jef-fery Phipps, Steven Petrarca, Jessica Purdy, Vance Daniels, and Adam Roth.

  And finally, even though he spilled tea all over my original manuscript, a hearty “thank-you” goes out to Michael Combs for never letting me off the hook. I owe you one, my friend.