by Unknown
But a swiftly approaching golf cart carrying a good friend at the Bureau made them all turn to stare. There was something in John’s ashen complexion, something very troubled in his hazel eyes. He hardly waited for the cart to come to a stop before he jumped out and approached them, looking five ways. His dark suit was rumpled like he’d been up all night. A departure from his normal, crisp, professional look, his wheat-hued thicket of hair was unkempt, matching his five o’clock shadow at ten A.M. All the judges shared a worried glance.
“You all right, John?” Walter asked. As the most senior member of the group of judges, anything that had gone awry he should have known about first. He stared at John McDevitt hard. John knew he had political aspirations, so he should have called him at home if there was a problem.
“Gentlemen,” John said, glancing around the suddenly solemn expressions. “We’ve got a real nutcase on our hands. It seems as though there’s someone going through all of your past cases… any ones that were… questionable.” He raked his mass of disheveled hair with his fingers. “I don’t know how to tell you gentlemen this, but anybody that was most likely guilty, and didn’t get convicted, or got out early on a bullshit walk—we’ve got ’em in our morgues.”
“What?” Jim murmured, and looked at Bill.
Brad began walking in a tight circle. “Jesus H. Christ… You have got to be kidding.”
“I wish I were,” John said, glancing around the group. “This is gonna be a problem for all of you.”
“Hold it, I know you’re not implicating us,” Tom said, glaring at the FBI Director. “I want my attorney present.”
“Of course we’re not blaming you,” John McDevitt said, looking confused. “What do you think we’re stupid, Tom? Like twelve judges paid to put hits on their cases that didn’t end in convictions? Be serious. We’re pulling our hair out trying to figure out how to protect twelve U.S. Judges from some nut that has gone berserk. We came here to personally warn you, because if they’ve gone after your dismissed cases, or those overturned on appeals, they might just be crazy enough to come after you… blaming you in some way.” He motioned with his chin toward agents in the distance. “We’ve got all sorts of psychological profilers looking at this from every angle.”
Ed sent a troubled gaze around the group. “You said in your morgues, so they went after how many?”
“Fifty top profile cases in a single night. That’s the thing,” John said, rubbing both palms down his face. “There had to be a network of them, because these are federal cases that happened all over the country—just like the murders were just done everywhere… and they tortured the perpetrators just like the notes and evidence from the trials read.”
“That’s our entire backlog of cases that walked,” Brad said, swallowing hard, his pale blue eyes alight with terror. “That many would have to be all of ours, plus Scott’s, Joe’s, Keith’s, Arnold’s, Pat’s, and Michael’s. Divide it among the twelve of us, and we each had at least three to four cases during our careers where we knew for a fact the defendant was guilty as sin, guilty of heinous crimes, but the law couldn’t bring them to justice because of technicalities.”
“That’s why we’re on it, your honor. We can’t have vigilante militias roaming around, following high-profile cases and dispensing barbaric, medieval, torture-style justice when they don’t like the outcome of a case. Next thing you know, the lawyers that defended them and maybe knew these perps were dirty, might be next on the hit list and tortured, too.”
The six judges present shared a knowing, horrified glance.
“Tortured?” Bill whispered, aghast.
“That sodomy case where the nut was molesting little boys—yeah, well, he died of hemorrhaging and a prolapsed rectum. You don’t wanna know what we found shoved up there. Same deal with the Robert Doogan serial killer case. They found that sonofabitch in San Francisco with his dick filleted and every wound he’d ever inflicted on the alleged victims was inflicted on him—down to the exact number of cigarette burns. Now, we’re trying to figure out how they all died in different cities and states at the same time on the same night without a single witness, no screams—some were even shot, but nobody heard a thing.”
“Do the other justices know?” Walter Kingsdale asked in a shaky voice.
“We’ve been informing them one by one this morning, your honor. We’ll keep you posted, and we’re ordering increased security for you all until we get a break in the leads.”
They watched their inside man and friend climb back into his golf cart, and they impatiently waited until he was out of earshot.
“We have to get the book back,” Walter Kingsdale said flatly.
“I’ve heard enough. I’m a believer. The coincidences are just too… I don’t know.” Tom swallowed hard and dropped his voice to a terrified whisper. “In there it said if the netherling acquired its own book back, it would be unstoppable.”
The six assembled judges nodded.
“What do you mean you sold the book to a private collector and cannot divulge who that is!” Walter Kingsdale bellowed. He stood behind his desk, his tall, imposing frame puffed up with righteous indignation as he raked his fingers through his thicket of silver-gray hair.
Eleven distraught faces stared at him in his walnut-appointed study. Decanters of brandy, bourbon, and scotch were carefully set down on polished tables. Crystal rocks glasses and brandy snifters were held midair. The room crackled with high-voltage tension as Kingsdale returned the telephone receiver to its cradle with a bang.
“Walter,” Ed said quietly, his gaunt face pinched with worry. “We have to figure out how to send the entity back.”
Nervous gazes ricocheted around the room.
“You don’t think I know that?” Walter Kingsdale stood and paced to the window. “If what we read in the book is true, after it eats its way up the food chain and addresses injustice that anyone complicit committed, it comes for its owner, if its owner dispatched it—and they have to pass the test of purity or it will seek reparations from the owner.”
“That’s why it’s the only demon the Devil won’t take,” Tom said in a trembling voice. “Lucifer will never call it, even though he benefits from the swath it cuts through humanity… and even though it’s doing justice, its methods are so horrible, the angels don’t want it. That’s why it’s called the netherling. A thing neither heaven nor hell wants.” He wiped beads of sweat from his brow and popped an antacid before taking another sip of his drink.
“This is fucking insane!” Jim shouted, leaping to his feet. His thinning auburn and gray hair was all over his head like a mad professor’s, and he lumbered back and forth, his potbellied frame huffing from the effort. “That means, if we believe this superstitious mumbo jumbo, that every lawyer involved in those dismissed capital cases who knew their client was guilty will be murdered? Is that what you’re saying? Then it comes for us?”
“I want out,” Bill said quietly as he blinked nervously behind thick, Ben Franklin-style glasses. His birdlike features drew to a severe point at his chin and nose, and he ran his fingers through his trimmed, sandy-gray hair while rocking where he sat. “I just want out, no matter what it costs.”
“I read the book,” Tom said, his hands and thick jowls shaking as he poured another bourbon. “I read it cover to cover when none of the rest of you believed. It draws you in, and that’s exactly what it said. Anyone complicit would be their attorneys, accomplices the DAs’ offices couldn’t catch—others. The netherling can only be sent back by the primary caller once it’s spilled blood, and it demands that person’s soul to be given over to Lucifer, if they want to spare themselves the agony of suffering the same fate they’d visited on others. That’s the only way. Somebody in this group has to make a pact with the Devil to make this creature go back into hiatus.” Tom looked at Walter Kingsdale. “Or else it will keep rampaging until everyone that helped the people we called it up to serve justice against is dead. Then, it comes for the callers. If w
e don’t pass muster—”
“This is complete superstition and bullshit, Thomas. I’ll get the book back,” Walter snapped, his nerves wire taut. “We’ll read what it fucking says, and we’ll close whatever dark portal we possibly opened while we were drunk. I for one refuse to be held accountable for the deaths of mobsters and serial killers and drug dealers or goddamned child molesters. They deserved what they got. Let them burn in hell. Didn’t we all say that that night? Didn’t we all wish we weren’t tied to laws and evidence, and could go back to the old days of justice when a man swung at the end of a rope if he did heinous crimes? Didn’t we talk about the fact that the Wild West was probably more civilized than putting axe murderers and killers in a facility supported by our tax dollars, with three hots and a cot? We’re clean!”
“But what was that stuff you said in the beginning, Walter… those words in another language you read?” Tom asked quietly, panic emblazoned in his eyes. “What if that was some sort of pact with Sat—”
“Don’t even say it!” Walter shouted. “We were all drunk. None of this is even real. All of this is hypothetical. We don’t even know if… if—what are we doing here?”
Eleven justices looked at him and then looked away, sending their gazes to the floor. Some had been mute the entire evening. No one knew what to do, no one wanted to take a stand. This had gone too far.
“Well, be that as it may, we knew the bastards we called this thing up to consume were guilty, then,” Brad finally said, sloshing his drink. He lifted his aristocratic chin and smoothed his salt-and-pepper hair back with an athletic palm. His pale blue eyes held no emotion. “Why would it come for us, assuming there’s a so-called it? You worry too much. This is all hypothetical, like Walter said. Who cares if this entity goes after the dirty counselors, too? As long as our noses are clean, who gives a shit?”
“You don’t understand! The text was clear!” Tom shouted, hoisting his hefty frame to his feet. “I’ve been on the bench for over thirty years. How many men might I have put away… maybe knowing they were innocent, but the preponderance of evidence—”
Horrified glances went around the room.
“Think about it,” Tom said, breathing hard. Tears glittered in his aging, blue eyes. “This thing rights any wrong in your life, if you were a caller. Any wrong. So sending an innocent man to prison for years is wrong, if looked at in purely black and white terms. That’s just one thing… what if you caused a suicide, a shooting by your actions, I don’t even know all what I might have done wrong. But I know I’m not perfect. I just hope God can forgive me.”
“We can’t be blamed for the errors made in youth, in climbing career ladders,” Ed said quickly, cutting off Tom’s outburst. Beads of nervous perspiration had formed on the gleaming horseshoe of his bald head and wisps of brown hair stuck matted to his scalp. “We’d all die.” He looked around. “I was in the South during Civil Rights.” Ed stood and went to the window. “There was a kid, young fellow no more than eighteen or twenty… but the pressures of that day, things were so volatile—I knew in my soul the evidence against him had been trumped up by the local police… but…” He closed his eyes and took a sip of his drink. “He hung himself in his cell after his first week in the penitentiary. They’d gang-raped him. His mother was a church woman and told me God knows all.”
“All right, gentlemen. Let’s gather our wits and pull ourselves together,” Walter commanded. “We got drunk and were playing with this bullshit like an Ouija board, and I for one refuse to believe that anything supernatural has come to life. I’d rather think it’s a vigilante group, a terrorist cell, and I know McDevitt is on it.”
“Tom, what was the spell to send it back?” Jim said, trembling so badly now that he held his glass with both hands.
Tom swallowed hard. “I don’t remember all of it… I just know that you have to call Satan and make a deal with the Devil. Then the thing goes back into its book… kinda like an insane genie going back into its bottle.”
NATIONAL NEWS REPORT…
The string of bizarre murders seems to be taking on a new dimension. A rash of attorneys’ deaths is sweeping the nation. The connection is all the same; the first wave of victims were their clients.
Walter Kingsdale clicked off the television, glad that his wife had gone to stay with her brother while the house was being guarded by federal agents. He tried the museum again, speaking to the acquiring curator, his tone more malleable. He had to get the book. He’d sent too many urban thugs to jail, allowing shaky, illegally obtained evidence to wipe the streets clean of the scourge he detested most. They’d called him the hanging judge, and he had a different brand of justice for those who came into his court from certain sectors of society. Like breeding rats, that’s how he’d thought of them.
Until now, he hadn’t cared what became of their lives, what horrors they’d faced in prison—they’d been illegitimate bastards born of welfare mothers and drug-dependent fathers, and as far as he was concerned, getting rid of them before they’d done anything serious was preventive medicine the urban environs required, like a preemptive strike. Now the netherling would hunt him down, and he didn’t even know whatever became of those young men.
“Please,” he murmured, once he and the curator had dispensed with formalities. “We think this book could be a part of a very sensitive case, and we need the new owner to at least meet with me—as lead justice, to discuss how it’s being used in capital offenses. The identity of the new owner, as well as his investment, will be thoroughly protected, as we know he is not directly involved.”
“This is so highly irregular, Judge Kingsdale, and the new owner is a heavy contributor to our antiquities department… but given the issues at hand, I will ask him to contact you. That’s the best I can do.”
Walter Kingsdale closed his eyes and nodded. “Thank you.”
WASHINGTON, DC, NIGHTLY NEWS…
Justice Edgar G. Hunt was found dead in his Alabama summer family home in what appears to be a bizarre, sexually inspired suicide. The apparent victim of a vicious, repeat sodomy attack, the kidnapped seventy-three-year-old justice took his own life by hanging himself by a bedroom sheet from a Waterford crystal chandelier. FBI—
Walter Kingsdale hit the remote to click the power off, turned away from the large, flat screen HDTV that graced his office, leaned over the side of his polished mahogany desk, and vomited on the Turkish rug. Dabbing beads of perspiration from his forehead, he clung to the edge of his desk and then pushed himself up with trembling arms.
“Justice is brutal, at times,” a deep, baritone voice said from across the room. “Unsettling.”
The judge’s head jerked up to stare into the shadows where a pair of high, winged-back leather chairs faced the fireplace.
“Who are you, and how did you get in here?” Walter gasped, wiping his mouth with the crisp sleeve of his starched, button-down Oxford shirt.
The figure moved calmly, standing from the chair to walk toward Walter’s desk. Under the muted chandelier light, his coal-hued eyes glittered with predatory intensity and amusement, and his elegant style of dress would peg him as one of the wealthiest young attorneys on the circuit. But his cool demeanor was also that of an assassin.
“I haven’t seen you in my courtroom before. How did you get past all the security out there to pitch me?” Embarrassed by his bodily fluids left on the rug, the justice stepped around the mess and went to his bar. “I don’t need another attorney, and there are ten FBI agents crawling all over the premises.”
“I know. I saw them,” the unidentified man said. “I may be new to your court, but I’m not new to systems of justice… and you are indeed correct. I’d love the chance to pitch you.”
Walter Kingsdale poured himself a scotch. “I’m in no mood. If you want something, you’ll have to see me—”
“I want to negotiate with you, kind sir.”
Walter took a liberal sip of liquor. “I just lost one of my best friends. If you nee
d a political fav—”
“I’m the new owner of the book.” The dark stranger smiled and cocked his head to the side. “Might we share a drink together?”
Slowly the stranger’s eyes changed, the pupils becoming slits within amber irises. Walter clutched his chest, horror trapped in his throat, trapped in the silent scream. It felt like his heart was twisting, ripping from the anchors of tissue holding it beneath his breastbone, lungs scorched by his last breath. His ears were ringing with instantly elevated blood pressure; the room became blurry as he weaved a bit, but then caught himself against the edge of the bar. The thing before him smiled.
“I want a chance to negotiate,” Walter rasped, sweating.
The entity smoothed the lapels on its designer suit and nodded. “So be it.”
Eerie calm befell Walter’s demeanor. The netherling tilted its head. This was intriguing.
The justice set his drink down very carefully, his voice catching in his throat as he dabbed away perspiration. “Name your poison.”
The stranger inhabiting his study laughed. “I like your style. Bourbon, neat.”
The justice complied and handed off the drink, but strangely the taste of bourbon scorched his throat as he watched the unidentified man that he knew was the netherling take a sip of it. For a second, everything went black. Like a slow blink. Then everything was so clear.
“What do you want?” Walter whispered.
The stranger looked at him. “The same thing you want—justice.”
Walter simply stared at the man.
“I cannot fully use the book without a dedicated caller,” the stranger said with a casual sip of his drink. “For years I have been looking for one that could call forth the power and who could feed the needs therein.”
“I do not understand,” Walter rasped. “Why not give it to Satan, then?”
The stranger chuckled and leaned forward, his lethal gaze holding the justice’s. “He doesn’t have a soul,” he whispered. “The feeding would be so hollow. That is reason enough. But perish the thought that Lucifer brings out the netherling. If it turned on him, the netherling would be trapped for an eternity feeding off the trail the Devil had left, and none of the sins created by mankind alone would be addressed…” He shook his head. “Too much baggage, bad karma. No, no, no, no, no. That is why it’s the book that, as they say, the Devil won’t take and angels don’t want.”