Amanda's Story

by Brian O'Grady

  “When Michael was around ten,” Lisa said after a protracted, uncomfortable silence, “we saw a film; I guess it was a documentary or something. In it was a brief clip of a tiny Japanese girl, probably four or five years old. She was half-naked and more than half-starved and was just sitting on a rock wall. I don’t remember for sure but I think it might have been outside Hiroshima or Nagasaki, because all around her was absolute devastation. But she didn’t have a scratch on her. She was all alone; everyone and everything she knew was gone in a blink of an eye, and she couldn’t understand why. An American GI slowly approached her and tried to give her some food. When he was about ten feet away she started to shake with fear. The closer he got the more she shook. She stared at the GI as if he were Death himself, but never moved. Never made an attempt to run. Her eyes …” Lisa wiped a tear, then continued. “They were filled with fear and resignation. She wasn’t even old enough to understand the concept of death, but instinctively she accepted it.” More tears fell. Amanda reached for a box of tissues. “Thanks, dear,” Lisa said and dabbed at her face again. “The image of that girl haunted Michael for years. He would have nightmares about her.” Lisa stood after a quiet moment and walked to the dark window, her back to Amanda.

  “I’m about to break the last promise I ever made to my son,” Lisa said to the window, Amanda, and the ether. “Two months before he died Michael brought Josh over unexpectedly. School was out, so I was home alone. I can’t remember where you were.” She snuffled loudly. “I played with Josh for a time, and he just silently watched us; it was almost as if he was reassuring himself about something. I finally asked him what was wrong. He had a lot of Greg in him, so it took some time to drag it out of him, and then only after he made me promise never to tell you.” Lisa turned and sat on the window sill with her head down, not willing to look up at Amanda. “He had the dream again, only Josh was the little girl and you were the GI, and you weren’t trying to help.” She closed her eyes. “Maybe it was just a dream; maybe he saw something. I don’t know. I do know it terrified him, and now I can understand why. The woman he loved, the mother of his child, had turned into something unrecognizable.”

  Lisa looked up and Amanda looked down. Even before the Change, did her husband believe that she was capable of hurting their son, just as Suzie Watts had done? Could he look into her soul and see the evil that hid behind her accommodating nature? And if he looked into her now, what would he see? Would he recoil in terror? Would he take their son and escape, leaving her with the certainty that she had destroyed the one perfect thing in her life?

  It was just a dream, his voice said from a deep recess of her mind. Everyone has them, and they mean nothing, he tried to soothe her.

  This was as close as the Michael-in-her-mind had ever come to lying. The reality was that, given the right circumstances, this version of Amanda Flynn could be the terrifying GI in Michael’s dream. Maybe she had taken a step away from the abyss, but it still pulled at her. It was no longer a demand; it had become a seduction.

  “I’m sorry, Amanda,” Lisa said from across the room. “I can only imagine how that must hurt.”

  “No, you can’t imagine it, Lisa. You’ve never betrayed their memory.” Tears fell into her lap as the shell around her soul cracked.

  ***

  “No matter how you slice it, we don’t know what killed this man. No drugs, no toxins, no radiation. That’s my official and FINAL word on the matter.” For three weeks a steady parade of increasingly senior agents of the FBI had been hounding Dr. Parisi for something that would explain the death of Bong-hwa Son. His presumed murder had become the feared proverbial international incident. A South Korean national, with remote ties to the National Intelligence Service, had killed an FBI agent in broad daylight, only to die under as yet undetermined circumstances. Fingers were being pointed in both directions as the investigation worked its way through Washington, Denver, and Colorado Springs. No one knew if Ted Alam was a hero or a villain, but it was generally agreed that the Korean, who had liked to introduce himself as Mr. Chang, was not the innocent bystander his government claimed. “If you didn’t have the video to the contrary, I would be forced to call this a natural death.” Parisi anxiously shifted his weight in the uncomfortable chair, hoping the Assistant Director of the FBI would take the hint and let him get back to work.

  Tim Kerr ignored the coroner’s obvious annoyance. “How does this fit with the cases from Colorado?”

  “Do you guys bother talking to each other? I’ve answered this question twice before. Son’s intracerebral hemorrhages were much worse than any of those cases. The one that came closest was in a hypertensive elderly male. Hypertensive elder males often die from bleeds in the brain. There’s no connection.”

  “Sorry to have kept you, Doctor. Thank you for coming in,” Kerr said with the required perfunctory civility. He stood, shook the older man’s hand, and then walked him to the door.

  “Well, he was loads of help,” Paul Lister said once the door had closed. “I don’t care what he says, there has to be a connection. For months Alam worked in the Colorado Springs police department just as they experienced a handful of poorly explained deaths. Way too coincidental. ” Lister shook his head.

  Kerr nodded his head in agreement. Unfortunately, their mutual gut feelings had no evidentiary support. He walked back to his desk and noted that Lister was comfortable enough to sit in one of the sofa chairs without being invited. He silently appraised the agent. Lister was what Ted Alam had been destined to become before alcohol addiction had its say. He was the oldest graduate of the FBI training class a year before Alam and had gone from local law enforcement over to the dark side of federal law enforcement. His maturity and experience allowed him to quickly outpace his fellow students, and like Alam he was tapped for the Washington Bureau and rapid advancement. “Nothing more from the ATM video?”

  “Same story as last week. Female between five-four and five-six. Light hair. Beyond that all we get are bigger and blurrier pixels.”

  “I thought that they had a program to clean up the image.”

  “The camera was too far away.”

  “Nothing to back up the airline manifests?” It was a routine part of every investigation to review and compare the incoming and outgoing flight manifests. Five minutes of computer work gave the agents the names of one hundred and fifty-six individuals who flew into the Washington area in the twenty-four hours prior to the shooting and then left within twelve hours following it. That was the easy part. The real work was tracking down those one hundred and fifty-six individuals. After three weeks only one name remained: Dalice Watkins, and no one seemed to belong to it. “Dalice flew to Dallas,” Kerr said idly. “You think this is our girl?”

  “I’m betting she’s the girl on the video, and I’ll double down that she’s the one who killed the Korean.”

  “How?”

  “When we find her we’ll know.”

  “Go to Colorado. Talk to the locals, but don’t step on any toes.”

  ***

  “There may be inconsistencies in the investigations, but there are no inconsistencies in the pathology results,” Phillip Rucker recited to Lister. The FBI agent had nothing to show for the week he spent in the Denver Field Office, so he drove the sixty miles to Colorado Springs. Another week’s worth of work only managed to produce a very brief report detailing an investigation involving the same unit that Alam had been stationed with for weeks. The report was two pages long and closed within a day due to a lack of forensic support. It was unlikely in the extreme to lead anywhere, but Lister wanted a second take on the forensics. It was all he had left. Everything that connected Ted Alam with the Korean had vanished. No e-mails, phone calls, forensics, nothing. He promised himself that after he ran the traps in Colorado Springs one more time he would head home.

  “All right, let’s approach it from a different direction.” Rucker’s reputation
of inhuman precision and oddity fell far short of the mark. Lister would have no trouble believing that Rucker was proof that aliens lived among us. His autopsy reports were flawless: no typos, misspelt words, smudges, or imperfections of any kind. “Can you review the autopsy report of the victim in Washington and look for any similarities?” Rucker nodded his head. Lister had been warned earlier about avoiding direct physical contact with the pathologist, so instead of passing the thick folder directly to Rucker he placed it on his unnaturally clean desk.

  Rucker waited for Lister to sit back into his seat before reaching for the file and carefully opening it. While waiting for Rucker’s impressions, Lister assessed the man through the lens of an FBI profiler. Rucker never made eye contact; consistently used formal pronouns; even while sitting he remained rigid, his back never touching the chair. His office had no personal touches, no pictures on his desk or his walls, no vanity wall dedicated to diplomas and awards. Nothing to indicate that he even occupied this office, aside from the name stenciled to the door. He turned the pages mechanically and rapidly, too fast for any normal human to read, but Lister was certain Rucker read every word and missed not a single detail. If this man ever decided to become a serial killer, the FBI would have zero chance of ever proving it.

  Less than five minutes later, Rucker turned the last page of the file and returned it to his desk. Lister took his cue and retrieved it. “Impressions?”

  “Yes, I have impressions.” Rucker said without expression.

  “Can you share them?” Lister followed up.

  “Yes, I can.” Rucker answered.

  “Can …please tell me your impressions,” Lister corrected himself.

  “Incomplete work, but that is not unusual. Drawing inferences from the data in this file, one can see similarities,” Rucker said to a spot on the wall behind Lister.

  “Can you elaborate?” It was a little fun talking to Rucker. He had asked the man if there were similarities and Rucker had answered.

  “Yes,” he said, without the slightest inflection. “Would you like me to list them?” he said after Lister waited for him to continue.

  “If you don’t mind.”

  Rucker gave the agent a brief strange look, as if his answer to a simple question made no sense. “There are seven areas in which these findings could overlap at least one of the four other cases.” Rucker spoke rapidly for almost fifteen minutes. Less than halfway through, Lister stopped taking notes. “I do have to caution you that my conclusions are predicated on information collected by another, and that the information given to me is in my opinion incomplete.”

  Lister had to contain a smile; he was certain that he had found the author of every legal disclaimer ever written. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but you lost me about ten minutes ago. Can you, in simple English—English that I can understand—tell me if in your opinion either the same person or the same process was responsible for the events both here and in Washington?”

  “Yes,” he said precisely.

  “Yes, you can tell me, or yes it was the same individual or the same process?”

  “Yes, I can tell you in simple English that in my opinion either the same individual, and or the same process, was involved both here in Colorado Springs and in Washington, DC.”

  Lister was about to ask Rucker if he was sure, but that would have been a foolish question. “Just to be clear, I’m a little slow”—everyone was a little slow around Rucker, he thought—“these local cases have not been labeled as homicides. I don’t think they are even being investigated. But now you are saying that an unknown individual or process is involved. Are you changing your mind?”

  Rucker gave Lister that same strange look again that made the agent feel like a six-year-old who couldn’t tie his own shoes. “You are not correct. I have labeled the deaths as ‘apparently natural.’”

  A distinction that only Phillip Rucker could appreciate. Lister stood and offered his hand but then snatched it back. “Thank you for your time, Doctor.” For a brief moment they made eye contact, and Lister stared into the empty eyes of the pathologist. They reminded him more of his autistic nephew than a serial killer.

  CHAPTER 37

  “Well, this is an unexpected visit,” Amanda said after Greg Flynn showed up at her new apartment.

  “I wanted to see what the place looked like once it was all spruced up.” He walked through the small living room to the floor-to-ceiling windows that opened onto a cloudy day. “I think I can see our house from here.”

  “Use the telescope,” Amanda said from behind him. Greg slid over to the telescope.

  “NO! Lisa’s putting onions in the salad again.” He pulled away with a smile that didn’t have the wattage to disguise his true intent.

  “What’s wrong, Greg?” Amanda retreated to her couch; Greg followed.

  He studied her carefully. “Are you okay here, alone?”

  “The isolation is good for me. Comforting. Sort of helps me with my perspective. How are you doing?”

  “Worried, but that will never change.”

  “I need the space,” she said, taking up an old argument. It had been several weeks since their tense confrontation, and neither Greg nor Lisa felt it was an appropriate time for Amanda to be alone. “I’ve made you a promise and I will live by it. No more letting Mittens off the leash.”

  Greg nodded. “I wish you had a better name, though.”

  “You’re not here to discuss the name of my psychotic alter ego,” she gently prodded.

  “The FBI is in town. They have a task force looking into Ted’s death, and now they’re looking into the … other cases.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound good.” Her tone was light and she sat crossed-legged on the couch.

  “Honey, this is serious. They will put this together.”

  “To what end? They have no evidence that it was me.”

  “This is hard for me, Amanda. I’m breaking an oath I swore to uphold before you were even born, along with half a dozen laws, and to be honest your lack of remorse makes it all the more difficult,” he chastised.

  “The only remorse I have is that it has affected you. I’m not sorry those people are dead …” She cut herself off before they strolled further into the minefield.

  “If they find you they will arrest you, evidence or not. One of their own is dead.”

  “How are they going to find me?” It was more of a question than a boast. Greg hesitated and the answer hit Amanda with the force of a hammer. “They think you’re involved.”

  “I am involved,” Greg snapped. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right. I was interviewed for an hour this morning about my role in the Suzie Watts case, and of course what I knew about Ted. It won’t take long before they have your name.”

  Amanda got off the couch and began to slowly pace in front of Greg. She wasn’t concerned about her safety—a part of her thrilled at the possibility of confrontation—but Greg and Lisa were another matter. “How ironic—the one time I was actually defending myself.” She stopped in front of Greg. “I’ll go to them and turn myself in. I can’t have you protecting me.”

  “No. That is the one thing you can’t do. If it was just the FBI I would say yes. Hell, I’d even drive you. But it won’t be just the FBI; you’ll be putting yourself back into the hands of those bastards who were experimenting on you, and if that happens …”

  “All right, then what do I do if they come a-callin’?”

  “First thing is to not overreact. Don’t make the situation worse.” His meaning was clear. “And try not to let them know what you can do.”

  Amanda nodded. “Maybe I should just disappear.”

  Greg was quiet for a very long minute. “Lisa would have my head on a plate if I agreed with you, but it may come to that.” His voice had dropped as if Lisa were in the other room. “At least for a while.”

 
; ***

  “She’s the right size, shape, age, hair color, and her college roommate’s first name was Dalice. On top of all of that, she was in Dallas at the time. How can you say it’s only suspicious?” Paul Lister asked his boss over the phone.

  “The only real evidence is the roommate’s name—everything else is suspicious but still easily explained away. Give me something that puts her on a plane to Washington and then we’ve got something,” Tim Kerr answered.

  “But she knew Alam.” Lister knew that everything he’d uncovered amounted to little more than a big pile of circumstantial evidence, but thirty years in law enforcement had given him the nose of a bloodhound, and he had caught a scent. “At least ask for a search warrant.”

  “Is the father-in-law involved?” Kerr ignored Lister’s request.

  “I don’t know. My gut says no, but if she’s involved he has to be.”

  “He is the chief of detectives in Colorado Springs. If we go after her, he gets caught up in it; even if he’s not involved, it will ruin him. And if later we find that we were wrong, the possibility of us getting any local assistance on anything will be exactly zero for a very long time. And it won’t be just Colorado Springs. You worked in Kansas City for ten years; how would you react if the FBI raked a fellow detective over the coals and then asked you for cooperation?”

  “Okay, I’ll keep digging. I guess I’m off to Dallas,” Lister said with resignation. He wasn’t surprised, just disappointed and tired of being on the road.

  ***

  Amanda had always loved the solitude of running, now more than ever. It was one of the few times when she was alone in her mind. The world was remote and for the most part asleep as she wound her way through a canyon trail. Dawn was at least a half hour away, but the nocturnal world was already closing up shop. A solitary coyote watched her from the edge of the woods, the rest of his pack already beginning to bed down. Wild animals had strange, indecipherable mental signatures, and his floated to her on the morning air. She tasted traces of curiosity, fear, and possibility, but his thoughts—if he had any—were remote. Dogs had great mental signatures, but most humans didn’t need telepathic abilities to read them. Their simple thoughts, needs, and desires were a welcome respite from the complexities of their masters.