Abandoned: A Thriller

by Cody McFadyen

  It’s this knowledge that let me keep doing what I do after Sands’s assault. I was worried that I’d be driven by rage, or a desire for revenge, and that these would cloud my judgment. I was relieved to find that I was driven instead by my desire to save the flawed and not by a need to destroy the evil. It’s a small thing to say, but the difference inside your heart is immeasurable.

  “Let’s take a look at the chat,” I say.

  “Which one?” Leo asks.

  “Bitch Chat. I imagine that’s where he found Douglas Hollister. Douglas doesn’t strike me as the philosophical kind.”

  Leo clicks on the menu option and the chat loads into the browser. A long list of names appears.

  “Pretty active place,” Alan says.

  Callie leans forward. “Look at the names. USAWomenSuck. Single4life. NotYrBalls. I continue to see a theme.”

  “Some chats require a log-in to observe the conversation. This one doesn’t, so you can watch without participating,” Leo explains.

  I read the back-and-forths, fascinated at this subculture of aggrieved man-boys.

  Marriage is just another form of prostitution.

  You got that right. My wife actually had a system. If I worked on the honey-do list, fucking was an option. If I completed it, sucking was an option. If I sat and watched the game, nothing was an option.

  What did you have to do to get her to swallow?

  Find another woman!

  LOL!

  “Charming,” I observe.

  The dialogue continues elsewhere.

  Thing is, I still hope sometimes to find a decent woman I could spend my life with. Does that mean I’m a pussy?

  Various responses fly:

  Yes!

  Pussy!

  Not really. We all hope for that to some degree. If we say otherwise, we’re lying. But the odds of you finding an American woman who’s not a cunt-on-wheels is pretty slim. You should look outside the U.S. if and when you’re ready.

  Mail-order bride? I don’t know.

  Russian women, Romanian women, Thai women. All of them know how to treat a man. And they’re all looking for American husbands. Supply and demand goes the other way, in those places.

  This is just one of three or four conversations going on in the chat.

  “Why are some of them silent?” I ask Leo. “I see some names that are just sitting there, not typing anything.”

  “They’re probably PM’ing—private messaging. One of them can double-click the name of another, and a separate chat window will open up. Then they chat privately. No one else can read the conversation.”

  I scan the names and their activity. “Quite a few of those, I guess.”

  “The really personal stuff generally takes place in PMs. Anything you say here can be read by anyone.” He sweeps a hand to indicate all of us. “Including law enforcement. In sex-based chat rooms, for example, you rarely see anything steamy going on out in the open. People come in to the primary chat to flirt; they use PMs to … you know.”

  “The word you are searching for is fuck, honey-love,” Callie purrs, teasing him.

  “Right,” he says, blushing a little. “Point being, the same applies here. If someone isn’t comfortable talking about something out in the open, they’ll ask for a PM.”

  “You talked about ’bots,” I say. “You said they could be programmed to respond to a private message.”

  “A canned response, sure.”

  “Then why don’t we just go down the line of names there and start clicking? We should be able to tell who the ’bot is, if there is one, right?”

  “If I were him, I wouldn’t have set up a canned response for just that reason. He’d assume someone like me could figure it out.”

  I frown. “Won’t a lack of response raise a red flag too?”

  “Not really. It’s fairly accepted that if someone doesn’t reply to your PM, they’re either not interested in talking to you or they’re already busy.”

  “So much for easy,” Alan says. “If we want to find him through the Net, we’re going to have to develop a real cover for this one. The whole enchilada.”

  “What’s that mean, exactly?” Leo asks.

  “One of us is going to have to make himself an enticing target for our perp,” Alan explains. “That means developing a full identity that will stand up to scrutiny. It means coming up with a name, backed by verifiable information, and a cell phone that he can call and that’s traceable to that identity. So on.”

  “It means having an address that matches the identity,” Callie chimes in. “In case he has some way of tracing the Internet provider you’re using. Mostly,” she says, “it means a lot of research. Reading all the ‘manifestos’ of the very lovely men from this website, wading through hundreds of forum postings. Et cetera and on.”

  “I get the house and cell phone, but I don’t really see the need for research. Things seem pretty straightforward here.” Leo smiles. “Just put on my wife-beater, drink some beer, and say ‘bitch’ every now and then, right?”

  “Wrong,” I tell him. “What you’re talking about is a stereotype, and it’s a common and sometimes deadly mistake in undercover work. A stereotype is a two-dimensional view. You need to exist, when you adopt an identity, in three dimensions.”

  “For example,” Callie supplies, “you are a computer nerd, yes?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Well, then, all I need to do is put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, grow some pimples, and know the difference between an IP number and a DNS server, right?”

  “Okay. I get it.”

  “Who do you want doing this?” Alan asks me.

  “You and Leo. It needs to be men doing it. I might miss something unconsciously as a woman. I want you as a backup. Leo’s too inexperienced. No offense, Leo.”

  “No, you’re right. I’ll feel better if Alan’s there.”

  “Shit,” Alan grumbles. “But that means I’ll be stuck.”

  “Why?” Leo asks.

  “He might have seen my face at the wedding, when he dumped Heather Hollister. If he’s watching the house, and he sees me, the jig’s up. Which means you’ll be doing all the shopping, roomie.”

  “Wait,” Leo says, “are you saying I’ll have to live there? Full time?”

  “Of course.”

  “But how do I explain that to my girlfriend?”

  “You lie.”

  “Lie?”

  Callie pats him on the top of the head. “Ah, I was once young and naïve too. Yes, honey-love, you’re going to lie. Tell her something exciting. You’re being whisked away on a top-secret mission; you might not come home alive. That’ll cover you and perhaps get you some hot good-bye sex too.” She winks. “Women love secret agents.”

  “Fuck,” he mutters.

  Alan claps him on the shoulder. “Think of it as an adventure.”

  Leo nods glumly. “What do you want me to do about the other stuff?” he asks me. “Liaison with CCU and the past cases?”

  “Those go on hold for now. You said the LAPD CCU was competent enough.”

  “Okay.” He sighs, resigned to his fate.

  “Division of duty,” I say. “James, you stay on the job of getting those files to Earl Cooper.”

  “He’ll have everything by end of day.”

  “Good. Callie, I want you to do all the legwork of setting up the identity and location. You know who to liaise with. I’d like to have things in place by tomorrow.”

  “Shouldn’t be too difficult. It doesn’t have to be fancy. We can have him work from home, so we won’t have to contend with building a workplace cover. I’ll have to find him an ex-wife. That might take a little longer.”

  “Find someone who’s not on the radar yet.”

  “A promising, fresh-scrubbed graduate to be. I’m on it.”

  “What are we going to be doing in the meantime?” Leo asks.

  “Research,” I say. “Lots and lots of research.”

 
; “There’s different ways to approach it,” Alan says. “My opinion, the best is to look for the things you can agree with, empathize with.” He points to the website, which is still sitting on the computer screen. “Find something in there that makes sense. Align the rest of it to that. That’s what a guy coming to the site’s going to do. He didn’t come here to find out everything about everything.”

  “He’s there to find the solution to his own problems,” Leo finishes, getting the idea.

  “Exactly.”

  “Everyone know what they’re supposed to do?” I ask.

  Silence is assent.

  “Let’s get to it.”

  We work late into the afternoon, each of us at our respective computers, reading over forum postings, lurking in the chat rooms, looking at the photographs.

  Sex is here, and so is rage, but most of all, below it all like a toxic river, is the pain. The anger is the top layer, the loudest voice, the most visible, but pain is the fuel that drives the engine.

  When rage outstrips agony, you have murder, and it’s this that I search for on the website. There are men, few and far between, who have long since passed the point of simply feeling their pain. It is their anger that drives them, anger that has mutated into rage. It’s a subtle thing, but as I read, the small tics become signposts.

  One man writes:

  God, sometimes I hate my ex-wife. I wish she’d just fuck off and die.

  Anger is present but has not yet taken over. He is still grieving, not raging.

  Another man writes:

  Feminists have all but destroyed the culture of manhood. We need to reclaim our right to be men, and fuck the women who disagree.

  Angry, but this is anger toward a principle, not a person.

  Then there are the ones I’m starting to the think of as “the dark men.”

  I lie awake sometimes in my bed at night thinking about her. About what she did to me. She fucked my best friend. She filed for divorce and got custody of my kids. She took my house and half my income. I live in an apartment, and I go to work every day, and I’m angry. I come home and eat alone, and I’m angry. But at night? When I’m in my bed and thinking about her? Sometimes I close my eyes and pray to God, or wish to the wishing genie, that she’d have a stroke, right now, or crawl into a bathtub and slit her wrists, or have a heart attack. I wish her dead. I actually lie there and try to will it to happen.

  That’s an obvious example. There are subtler, even darker ones. Such as:

  God took a shit, and there was a woman. Sows, every one of them. The sow who took my son from me, I watch her from my car after work every night. I sit outside, parked, and watch that bitch.

  “This is tiring as hell,” Alan laments, standing up to stretch and groan. “I’ve never seen such a collection of whiners in my life. I mean, what’s the problem? You want to be a man? Be a man! You want to think differently than the quote feminists unquote? Think differently! No one’s putting a gun to your head.”

  “What about the ones who lose their kids? You don’t think we have a system skewed toward the mother when it comes to custody?” Leo asks. “Just playing devil’s advocate.”

  “There are countries where the kid goes to the father by default. You think that’s right?”

  “Not especially. I think custody should be based entirely on who is the fittest parent and not biased toward gender. Women are considered a safer bet as a parent. Why?”

  “That’s good, Leo,” I say. “Sounds like you found one of your points of agreement.”

  He smiles, showing me that his comments had been more intellectual than passionate. “I saw their side of the argument, but the jury is still out.”

  “Who raised you?” Alan asks.

  “My father, mostly.” He looks uncomfortable. “Mom was a drunk.”

  “How would you feel about incorporating that into your cover?” Alan asks.

  “Okay, I guess. Not pleased, but okay.”

  “That’s the point. A good cover has just enough truth in it to make it believable. If you can incorporate things that give you real emotional response, response you don’t have to fake, so much the better.”

  “Are we ready, then?” I ask Alan. “To build the cover?”

  “I think so. I’ve read plenty. Leo?”

  “I have a pretty good understanding of it all.”

  “You seem to have a pretty strong connection with the child-custody aspect,” I say. “Sorry to get personal, but in the interests of motivations for your cover … I’d guess you object to the bias for the mom based on your own experience as a child.”

  “That’s fair. Dad is the one who held the family together, fed us, clothed us, made sure we went to school and did our homework.”

  “Good, that’s good,” Alan says. “That’s exactly what you’re going to use for your cover. You are a newly divorced, disillusioned twenty-eight-year-old.”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Right, twenty-nine-year-old with a baby face, got it,” Alan teases. “You were raised by a solid, dependable father and an alcoholic mother.”

  “Who physically abused you,” I interject.

  “My mother never abused me.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, but here is where the narrative veers away from the truth and into the profile we need. Your mother abused you physically. She did it when your father was not around, and you hid it from your father.”

  “Why did I hide it?”

  “Because you were trying to keep the family together. You still loved your mother, and your father had said, many times, that if things got much worse, he was going to divorce your mom.”

  Leo’s face reddens. He looks away.

  “Hit a nerve there?” Alan asks.

  He seems to shake himself. “Dad always called Mom ‘a woman of trouble and fire.’”

  “What did he mean by that?” I ask.

  “It meant that she was full of life, and full of trouble, both, together.” He bites his lower lip, pensive. “I remember one Saturday, I woke up and Mom was sober. I guess I was about twelve. I walked into the kitchen and she was awake, not hungover, and she’d made me breakfast. A great breakfast. Pancakes and bacon and fresh squeezed orange juice. I’d never had fresh squeezed orange juice until that morning. I remember drinking it and thinking it was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

  “After breakfast, Mom asked me, out of the blue: Leo, do you know how to dance? I didn’t, of course. I was pretty geeky, and I told her as much. She grabbed my hand and took me into the living room. It’s never too late to learn! she laughed.” He pauses, remembering. “Mom had a great laugh. Anyway. She put on one of my CDs, and we spent the afternoon dancing. Dad was on a double shift, so we were all alone.” He picks at the knee of his pants, glum. “I wasn’t a great dancer by the end of it, but I’ve danced ever since. Mom started drinking around dinnertime. She was angry by six, crying by seven, and blitzed by eight. Fresh squeezed orange juice and dance lessons, followed by vodka and puking and tears, all in the same day. Trouble and fire.”

  “You need to tell that exact story when you’re on that site,” Alan says. “It’s real, son. So it’ll ring true.”

  “I understand.”

  “The child end of things is more problematic,” I say. “We can’t pull a child into this operation.”

  “I have an idea on that,” Leo offers. “Go ahead.”

  “What if my ex-wife had an abortion?”

  I resist the urge to put a hand to my own stomach. “Go on.”

  “What if she got an abortion prior to the divorce to avoid child-custody issues?”

  Alan whistles. “Yeah, that could generate some hate.”

  “It could tie in with my whole story,” Leo continues, picking up speed as his certainty increases. “My dream was to raise my own child in a good home, with a stable mother and father. She destroyed all of that.”

  “It’s a good stressor,” I agree.

  “Just the kind of thing to bring a
young man out of despair and into a nice, simmering rage,” Alan says. He claps Leo on the shoulder again. “Good work, son. You’re a natural.”

  We spend another hour working out the details. A good cover is not so much about the big picture. It’s about what one of my teachers at Quantico used to describe as “moments of undeniable humanity.”

  There are things you hear, he’d said, that you know are true. Moments of undeniable humanity. Like when a character in a book admits to us that he eats his boogers, or a husband fakes an orgasm, or a wife adds spit to her cheating husband’s BLT. Perfection is not empathetic. We feel intimate with other strivers and failers; we’re comforted to find that someone else also stole a dollar from Mom’s purse.

  “An important aspect of undercover work,” Alan says, “maybe the most important aspect, is patience. Criminals are a suspicious bunch of people. Their first assumption is that you can’t be trusted, period. You prove otherwise by not seeming too eager, by just playing the part. You don’t do anything out of the ordinary, until you do.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “People are unpredictable. Being too predictable can be suspicious. The bank manager who slinks off to put on women’s panties is more believable than the bank manager with a drinking problem.”

  “Why?”

  “People like drama, I guess. Point is, every now and then, you throw a curveball. Not a big one, just enough to show them, yeah, this guy’s human. A key one can be to break an appointment. If he says, Meet back in the chat tomorrow at two o’clock, you agree and then don’t show up ’til four or maybe not until the next day. When he asks why, you say, I fell asleep, or I got too depressed to move, or I went to a movie. It pisses him off, and that’s real, you see?”

  “I’m starting to.”

  Callie bursts into the office, carrying a stack of documents and with a young woman in tow. The woman is about the same age as Leo. She’s around five feet four, with dirty-blond hair down to her shoulders and a trim figure.

  “I have what we need to get started,” Callie announces. I raise an eyebrow. “That was fast.”