Abandoned: A Thriller

by Cody McFadyen

  “Don’t discount the power of my charm.” She drops the documents down on the desk in front of me, ignoring Alan’s snort. “Driver’s license, Social Security number, bank accounts with a minimum of money in them—you’re not a rich boy, Leo.”

  “Good, that’ll make it easier to get into character.”

  “Your name is Robert Long. You dabble in freelance computer consulting and are trying to break into day trading—so far unsuccessfully.”

  “So I’m a quasi-loser.”

  “A dreamer, honey-love, someone who walks the path less traveled. Think positively. This is your ex-wife, the ex-Mrs. Robert Long. Her real name is Marjorie Green. She just started in the financial crimes division. Her cover name is Cynthia Long, née Roberts. Being smart, as I am, I thought you could come up with a nice story about the serendipity of her maiden name being Roberts while your first name is Robert.”

  “Glad to meet you, Marjorie,” I say, extending my hand.

  “Thank you, Agent Barrett,” she says, shaking my offered hand. She’s looking at me a bit goggle-eyed. “I know it’s not professional of me, but I just wanted to say that I’m a huge admirer. I’ve studied your career and your cases.” She smiles shyly. “I’m not a stalker, just a fan.”

  “Well, thanks. I appreciate you taking part in our operation. Has Callie briefed you?”

  “To a degree.”

  Marjorie Green is one of those subtle women, the ones I secretly tend to envy the most. She looks younger than she probably is, but she radiates a mix of unselfconscious assurance and lack of ego, an air of quiet, unprepossessing confidence.

  “We’ll fill you in. Let me introduce you to the others.”

  Everyone is welcoming and friendly, except for James.

  “We have a house,” Callie continues, when the introductions are complete. “Both the title and the mortgage will be in place by tomorrow morning, held in the names of Robert and Cynthia Long. I went with leaving a fair amount of equity in the home.”

  “How much?” Alan asks.

  “More than a hundred thousand.”

  “Good. It’ll give credibility to Robert Long’s need to get the wife out of the way.”

  “Nothing makes more sense when it comes to murder than money,” Callie agrees. “They both have a good credit rating to go with the Social Security number, and there are credit cards with minor balances on them for both. Use them sparingly and make sure you keep all your receipts.”

  “I assume you have a place for Leo too?” I ask.

  “Of course. Being the slighted young man, he’s in a so-so two-bedroom apartment. All utilities, including Internet and the rest, will be activated tomorrow. Ah, and a joint life-insurance policy as well. Five hundred thousand dollars on each of you.”

  I shake my head in amazement. “Jesus, Callie. How’d you manage to get all of this done so fast? This normally takes at least a week.”

  “I am owed many favors by many people. And I have my numerous male fans, of course.”

  “Puh-leeeze,” Alan says, rolling his eyes. Marjorie watches it all, bemused.

  “Additionally,” Callie says, pinning Alan with a scowl, “I told them it could count as a belated wedding gift. It’s called incentive.”

  “However it occurred, good job.”

  “Thank you.”

  “When are we going to start?” Marjorie asks.

  It’s a good question, and I give it careful consideration. As Alan had said, the bugbear of a good undercover operation is a lack of patience. There are probably a number of women out there, locked away in dark rooms, losing their minds and picking their skin until it bleeds. He’d warned us about coming after him, and we need to ensure that our actions do not endanger any living victims.

  “Tomorrow,” I decide. I look at Alan and Leo and Marjorie. “That work for you?”

  “It works great for me,” Marjorie says, obviously excited about her first undercover experience.

  Leo and Alan both nod, resigned to their fate.

  I give Leo and Marjorie my full attention. “You have to operate on the assumption that you’re being watched, every day. When you’re on this assignment, you’re not allowed to call family, wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, anyone. Success depends on assuming the identities we’re developing for you.” I pause to give weight to what I’m about to say next. “The consequences of having your cover blown go further than your own safety. We’re operating on the assumption that his threat is real, that he has other prisoners. If he thinks we’re getting too close, he could decide to kill them. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Leo says, face and voice sober.

  “Yes,” Marjorie replies.

  “Good. Then let’s get Marjorie up to speed and finish building your covers.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I am at the prison, watching Douglas Hollister as he sits across from me. The rest of my team are busy at their assigned tasks; I want to spend some time with Hollister, so I can continue to fill in the picture of the man who’s behind all this.

  We still know remarkably little about our perpetrator. He’s done an excellent job of hiding himself from view, whatever his anomalies in that regard. He’s kept contact at a minimum, controlled all points of communication. He’s mutilated most of our best witnesses, and Heather Hollister is too damaged to be much help right now. Douglas Hollister is the most tangible link we have.

  I take some time to study Hollister before speaking. He’s a broken, beaten man. It permeates his body language and his silence. He stares down at his own hands, meeting my eyes only once, when he entered the interview room. He’s aged overnight; his skin is sallow, and his face sags in exhaustion and depression.

  “Why are you here?” he asks, listless.

  “Two reasons. I want to talk more with you about the man you dealt with. And I wanted to see how you were adjusting to prison life.”

  He raises his head at that last. “Adjusting? Is that a joke?”

  “Not at all.”

  He snorts, but it’s halfhearted. “I’m trapped in a building filled with rapists, murderers, and thieves. Almost all of them are bigger and stronger than I am, and almost all of them are unfriendly. How do you think I’m doing?”

  “Has anyone threatened you?”

  “Not overtly. But it’s coming. I can feel it.”

  “You can request protective custody.”

  “Oh sure.” His tone is derisive. “Someone told me about that. You’re put in another building with a different set of rapists and murderers and thieves, except now you have a target on your back forever, because everyone assumes you’re a snitch. No thanks.”

  “If it comes down to a choice between that or death, I’d advise you to choose that, Douglas.”

  He sighs, rubs his face rapidly with both hands, as though he’s trying to wake himself up from a hangover or a nightmare. His skin glows red from the rubbing, then returns to its normal color. “I’m not all that concerned with living or dying right now. Why should I be? I killed one of my own sons, and the one who lived will know that eventually. Dana’s a … thing now. And Heather wins, after all. Death? I really don’t care.”

  Heather wins?

  I fight the instinct for anger. However many years I spend with sociopaths, with all their malignant narcissism, they still have the ability to surprise me. They have a twist in their mind that I can’t understand in the root of me.

  “You will,” I say. “You feel that way now, but it will pass.”

  “How do you know?”

  Because I know you. Because you care more about yourself than any other human being in the world. Because you are what you are pathologically, by reflex. You couldn’t be otherwise any more than you could choose to stop breathing.

  “Because I’m familiar with the phenomenon of shock,” I tell him instead. It’s a true-enough answer. “I’ve dealt with men and women in your situation. Suicide or death wishes are a common first stage. Survival asser
ts itself eventually.”

  “Really?”

  The self-pitying sound in his voice makes me want to say ugly things, to hurt him in his weakness. Poor baby, I want to say. Is life unfair for poor widdle you? I slam down the window on these thoughts and continue to wear my own mask.

  “Really. Just hang in there, and don’t close any doors you might need to open later, okay?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.” He raises his gaze to mine and I witness naked gratefulness. Who knows if it’s real or calculated?

  “You’re welcome. Let’s talk about this man, this Dali. Are you willing to do that?”

  “Why not? He’s the reason I’m here.”

  “That’s exactly right,” I say. “You don’t owe him anything.”

  He seems to take courage from this idea. He sits up straighter and nods to himself a few times. “Yeah. Yeah. Fuck him. Okay. What do you want to know?”

  “When you talked, did he ever explain what his name meant?”

  “Dali?”

  “Yes.”

  “I never asked. He wasn’t the kind of man you question a lot.”

  “Fair enough. What else can you tell me?”

  Hollister frowns, thinking. “He was very careful about giving me any details. I never spoke with him face-to-face, only by cell phone and email, and those numbers changed regularly. He was always the one to initiate contact. I had no way of reaching out to him.”

  “How about his voice? Was there anything distinctive about it? High-pitched, low-pitched, rough, smooth, anything?”

  “Sorry. He used some kind of voice scrambler. It made him sound like a robot when he talked.”

  I bite my lip, frustrated. “How long were you posting and chatting on that website before he first contacted you?”

  “On beamanagain.com?”

  “Yes.”

  He considers it. “Not long. A week and a half? I think that’s right.”

  “What kind of things were you saying just before he contacted you?”

  Hollister gives me an appraising look. I glimpse the first return of shrewdness. “Why?”

  “Just trying to get a full picture.”

  The barest smirk ghosts his fetid lips. I prefer the beaten-down Douglas to the man I see returning to himself now. Sometimes the mask slips. “It was pretty specifically after I said something along the lines of I wish I had the guts to just make her go away.”

  “You said it that openly?”

  “Sure. I was just one of a bunch of other guys venting. I didn’t feel like I was risking anything.”

  “That’s when he contacted you for a private chat?”

  “Right.”

  It makes some sense, I think. No reason to tiptoe around something like this. When you’re selling kidnapping, torture, and murder, you have to be aggressive. Dali would watch for the indicators of more than mere discontentment and then he’d approach and be blunt about it. Most of the time, I bet, he gets turned down. The majority of the human race is all bluster when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of harm. It’s one thing to say to your wife, “I wish you were dead,” and another thing entirely to bury an ax in her skull and dump her body in a lake. The distinction might seem a hop and a jump to the uninitiated, but in reality the difference is a distance from here to the sun.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Exactly what I said when the black man was interviewing me. Dali told me he could make my problem disappear. He offered proof and he warned me that if I breathed a word, he’d kill Avery and Dylan.”

  “Why’d you agree to go ahead? What was the tipping point?” I ask the question without really thinking about it. It’s the common need, the most visceral one: a desire to understand why. We need why; it helps us sleep at night. Too many times, there is no why, there’s just madness.

  Hollister seems to have a need to understand it himself or perhaps to make me understand. He leans back in his chair and ponders my question. The silence in the room settles in as I watch him struggle to unravel his own reasoning.

  “I just … I guess I just didn’t see any other way out. Divorce meant giving her my house and my sons and half my money for God knows how long. This was a way for me to get the happiness I deserved.” He points to his chest and the expression on his face is hurt, bewildered, petulant. “I deserved to be happy too.”

  I think I hate the ones like him the most. The serial killer is a simpler, more honest monster. Ask them why they did it, and their answers boil down, in the end, to the same thing: because it makes me feel so very, very good.

  Douglas Hollister and his ilk live in a world of mirrors that reflect their own rightness and rationalizations back to them. They’re worse, in some ways, because they’re too close to the rest of us. They lack the elegance of the serial killer’s mandate. Why’d he do it? For money. For a house. Because he is a spoiled, failed, psychotic child.

  “Did Dana know, Douglas? Was she in on this with you?”

  His face falls, and his eyes grow hostile. “No. Fuck you for asking.”

  So she was another victim of your narcissism, in the end.

  “Thanks for your time.” I stand up and head toward the door.

  “That’s it?”

  I turn to him. “Just one more question, Douglas. Are you happy now?”

  I’m pleased by the rage that profuses his face. I’ve grown crueler, and I question it less and less. Should I be worried?

  I reach my car without an answer. By the time I hit the highway, I’ve forgotten the question.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “I knew it,” Bonnie says to me.

  Tommy and I look at her, then at each other. “You did?” I ask.

  We’re sitting at the dinner table. Dinner has long since been enjoyed, the dishes washed and put away. I’d told Tommy about my revelation of our marriage when I arrived home, and his happiness gave me the certainty that I’d done the right thing. He’d pulled me into his arms and held me there.

  “Thank you,” he’d said. “I hated having to hide something I’m so proud of.”

  I haven’t dropped the pregnancy bomb on him yet. I am reserving that for, well—now. Or shortly. First we have to finish our sheepish confession to Bonnie.

  She smiles and reaches out, taking one of Tommy’s hands and one of mine. “Of course I knew. You guys aren’t good at hiding when you’re really happy. I thought about the Hawaii trip and put it all together.”

  “Smart girl,” I say, my voice wry. “So?”

  “So what?”

  “So what do you think? How do you feel about it?”

  “Oh.” She grins. “I think it’s about time.” Sometimes it gets to be that easy.

  I pull my hand away and clear my throat. “Well, uh, I have some other news too.”

  I suddenly feel as though I’m naked on a stage, with a spotlight blinding me. My throat feels rough, and my heart is pounding in my chest.

  “Smoky?” Tommy asks. “What is it?”

  “Well, you see …” I clear my throat again, and now I’m getting angry at myself. “Oh, for God’s sake. Look, I’ll just say it, okay?” I take a deep breath in, then: “I’m pregnant.”

  Neither of them reacts, not at first.

  “What’s that?” Tommy asks. He seems dumbfounded.

  “I said, I’m pregnant. We’re having a baby. Your baby.” I sound defensive. I hate it when I sound defensive. It’s fear, not fight. Fight is better.

  They both fall into silence. I grind my teeth. I’m starting to get pissed off and more afraid at the same time.

  “Well? Don’t either of you have anything to say?”

  Tommy sits back. His jaw is slack. “I’m going to be a father?”

  There is wonder in his voice, only wonder, and I know then that it’s all going to be okay. Terror flees, replaced by a relief that exhausts me, the bottom of the adrenal bell curve. Bonnie stands up and comes over to me. She hugs me, wordless. She clings to me, not letting go, and I worry fo
r a moment what it means. Is she scared? Jealous? Sad?

  She pulls away and wipes tears from her face.

  “What is it, honey?” I ask.

  “That’s just … so cool,” she says, choking a little. I laugh and she laughs as well, and then I’m crying too, so now we’re both crying and laughing, as Tommy watches and repeats: “I’m going to be a father? Holy shit.” We stare at him in shock.

  “Tommy,” I say. “Did you just use profanity?”

  His eyes swim toward me, here yet not here, happy and disbelieving at the same time. “Did I?” he asks. He stands up, the chair sliding back on the wood floor. He walks over to us and he takes us both in his arms, Bonnie and me, equally.

  “I love you both very much.” His voice is rough, like unsanded wood. He hugs us to him with certainty and tenderness, that mix of sorrowful strength all good men seem to carry around with them.

  “This is great news.”

  Tommy, my man of few words. Sometimes shorter is not just better. Sometimes it’s the best of all.

  “Listen to me, honey,” I tell Bonnie. “This is important.”

  “Okay.”

  “The first thing you need to know is, the moment you stop really listening to me, the moment you put your attention on automatic or start acting like you know everything or get impatient with my direction in the slightest way, we pack up and leave. Got that?”

  “Yes.”

  Bonnie and I are at the shooting range. Raymond, Kirby’s undertaker friend, sits outside in the parking lot, watching and waiting. He reminds me of a frog. Perched, quiet and harmless, until a fly buzzes by, then the fly is consumed and quiet harmlessness resumes.

  We’d gotten past our tears and happiness. Well, maybe not past the happiness, but at least the giddy side of it. Tommy is at home, searching the Internet for a book on pregnancy and childbirth. I considered trying to dissuade him but gave it up in the end because, in truth, I like that he’s doing it. This isn’t going to be the walk in the park it was when I was in my twenties. The thought of Tommy boning up on the subject brings me comfort.